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Our procrastinating lawmakers went home for the holidays without approving key spending bills for the new year. But Congress did okay a bill that guarantees all of us free access to our credit reports every year. Hooray! Reviewing your report can be an important weapon in the war against identity theft and may lead to cheaper credit if an error in your report is causing you harm.
In fact, the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions (FACT) Act of 2003 mandates that, even without asking, you be told if information in your credit report is responsible for your being offered a higher-than-normal interest rate.
Unfortunately, it could be a year or more before the new law goes into effect. First, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve Board have to write workable regulations. The FTC has six months to write the rules on how to obtain a free credit report and another six months before they must be implemented.
Assuming that the rules are in place in early 2005, all it will take is a toll-free phone call, a visit to a central Web site or a letter to order your reports from all three major credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. A Congressional Research Service study calculates that it could cost the industry almost $400 million a year if all 190 million U.S. credit users request their reports. The Congressional Budget Office, however, assumes that only 25% of credit users will do so.
Rather than wait for the bureaucratic wheels to turn, if it's been more than a year since you checked your credit history, it's probably worth paying to get your reports. Equifax offers all three for $29.95.
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